ENVY-FILLED LEFTIST IDEOLOGOUES MASQUERADING AS TEACHERS

The huge success of Wal-Mart is its real offence. Tearing down the successful is infinitely more important and satisfying to Leftists than helping the unsuccessful. If you doubt it, judge them by what they are good at. With their socialist ideas, they create poverty: they don't alleviate it. When did you see a welfare client get rich?

When it's time to pick up supplies for her third-grade classroom, Jennifer Strand would prefer to steer clear of Wal-Mart. The teacher is convinced the retail giant isn't paying workers a fair wage, but in the northeastern Washington town of Colville -- population 5,000 -- the only other option is a small stationery section in the local grocery store. So Strand became a reluctant Wal-Mart shopper -- venturing in from time to time to pick up supplies and emergency items for disadvantaged students, such as coats and shoes. She'd get reimbursed through the Washington Education Association's Children's Fund, a decade-old charity that provides up to $100 per student each year.

Not anymore. Taking a bold political stand, the state teachers' union last week declared the fund off-limits to Wal-Mart purchases. In a newsletter distributed to teachers, association President Charles Hasse cited Wal-Mart's "exploitative labor practices (that) have added to public assistance burdens in our state and across the nation." Hasse said yesterday that the action followed repeated suggestions from teachers to either change the policy or distribute information about the company's labor practices. Hasse said he's received more than 200 responses from teachers around the state, who were 20-1 in favor of eliminating Wal-Mart reimbursements. "It was interesting to see the intensity of feeling around this," he said.

Objections to the change stemmed primarily from concerns that teachers in rural areas would have no alternative to Wal-Mart. In the absence of other shopping options, Hasse said, exemptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis. "We're not going to have some student go without a coat if that's the only place it could be purchased." The Children's Fund provides about $50,000 a year to teachers around the state, according to Hasse.

Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman yesterday refuted the unfair labor practice accusations. He said 86 percent of Wal-Mart hourly employees have medical insurance, and more than half of them are covered by the company. The company's average wage for hourly "sales associates" is $10.14 in Washington state, Fogleman said, compared with the national average of $9.68......

Roger Kinney, a marketing and business teacher at Burlington-Edison High School in Skagit County, said he's angry with the association for "dishing around in areas that they don't belong." Kinney believes the association's opposition is a show of solidarity for other unions that have so far eluded certification at any Wal-Mart store. "I think the unions know that Wal-Mart is a huge market for them, and there's a lot of money to be tapped from that market," he said.

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A SUPERFLUOUS BUREAUCRACY

"One complete waste of taxpayer money is the Department of Education: "Unlike the educational system of many other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized, and the Federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curriculum or educational standards. Rather, the primary function of the United States Department of Education is to administer federal funding programs involving education and to enforce federal educational laws involved with privacy and civil rights. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal process known as accreditation which the Department of Education has no direct control over."

So essentially we've created a bureaucracy that funds institutions across the states but does not have the ability to hold said institutions accountable. This is the same sort of thing that defined welfare for far too many years. The Democratic Party preyed upon people's impressions of poverty and demanded obscene amounts of money to fund programs that didn't work and would never work from what must have seemed like an infinite well of taxpayer dough. That same mentality is what has defined funding of our public schools.

The fact of the matter is that every year that passes the Department of Education along with the school boards and the Teachers Union continue to invalidate the role of the parent and the parent in turn gladly removes themselves from their role in guiding their children's education. In short, the federal government is attempting to become more of a parent to the nations children while the parent takes a siesta. In the end this arrangement is sending the performance and intelligence of our children down the toilet.

I see it everyday when I go to work. I see parents, single mothers mostly, attempting to raise their children and reconcile their mistakes as best they can. They rely heavily on the schools to co-parent with them and the schools are only too happy to oblige. However, that's not the role of school. Parents have to do the work themselves and stop relying on the federal government via teachers, social workers, police officers, etc., to be the parent they can't bring themselves to be. The kind that takes an interest in their child 24 hours a day instead of whenever the mood suits them.

Meanwhile, as stated above, the Department of Education and public schools in general need to be mothballed. They have outlived their usefulness. There are several alternative solutions that every member of society can utilize if we'd only stop reinforcing this co-dependant behavior. I think the rules of the marketplace should absolutely be applied to the education system. First, get the federal government out of it entirely. Life works much better when local governments work directly with their constituents rather than invoking this big hulking mammoth of a disconnected bureaucracy to settle issues it cannot possibly comprehend or do anything constructive about.

With the DOE unable to muck things up, you have the option of employing several ideas. Obviously the most talked about strategy for improving education is the school voucher program. Parents have to take a direct interest in where their children go to school and they should be given the opportunity to shop around for competent districts rather than be herded into failing ones. Again, we should let the marketplace decide which schools stay and which ones go instead of subjecting ourselves to the tyranny of the Teachers Union. Funding for the school vouchers should come in the form of tax-credits or negative income for parents who don't make enough money to send their children to private schools on their own. We don't need a new bureaucracy for that and not having to pay for the old one would free up plenty of money.

Part of "No Child Left Behind" allows for the conversion of charter schools from public schools that have failed their students. While I think said Act is ridiculous and misses the larger point of what is going wrong in public schools, this idea of school conversions needs to be implemented across the board. Every school (except elementary schools) should be a charter or private school, which would command the rules of the business world thus ultimately being better, as capitalism usually is, for our children. This would also effectively kill the Teachers Union, which in my opinion has done more damage to the profession than it has benefited it. Having been a teacher myself in the Los Angeles Unified School District for a period of time, believe me, I saw this nonsense first hand.

For those of you that cannot imagine a world where the federal government doesn't insert itself where it truly doesn't belong, there is another suggestion. I am aware that even with tax-incentive vouchers, scholarships, etc., many students will not make it to a private institution for a variety of reasons. Programs such as the ones I'm describing would have a difficult time penetrating the lowest-income sections of our cities and rural areas. Here I would suggest letting the federal government do what it does best and allow the armed forces to set up training academies in place of public schools. Essentially it would be sleep-away private school with all the benefits getting kids out of the environments that aren't conducive to learning in the first place. If certain parents are going to drop their kids on the steps of City Hall and say that the "government" should parent for them then let the best institution have a crack at it. Military institutions are the only federal programs that can parent effectively when the parents themselves simply cannot function in that capacity.

In my opinion, these are the choices in front of today's American parents; step up and become invested in your child's education or stand back and let the military have them. Either way, the system we have now isn't helping anyone. We continue to burn money on a failed system while our children become less educated and more obstinate".

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TOM BARRETT ON EDUBABBLE

"We all laugh when we hear people talk about "psycho-babble." The "edu-babble" that is spouted by education professors is less funny and a lot more dangerous. It's dangerous because students leave these colleges and become school administrators and officers of the NEA (the national teachers union). In these positions they are able to influence what and how our children are taught. As a result, schools are de-emphasizing traditional learning, and placing emphasis on feel-good liberal favorites such as "discovering one's self" and "constructing one's own knowledge." Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but it seems to me that the world would be a better place if we all worked off the same knowledge. It's a lot less confusing that way. Even when real subjects are discussed, they are couched in Ed-speak: one doesn't just write, one is "given permission to think on the paper"; one doesn't converse, one "negotiates meaning."

What have all these "improvements" to the educational process brought us besides our student's miserable performance in math and science? According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (see LINK below), reading is also a serious problem area. Less than half of children in grades four, eight and twelve read at a proficient level. Only 31% of all fourth-graders, and 12% of black fourth-graders read at their grade level.

By the end of fifth grade, poor children are two and a half years behind wealthy kids in all subject areas. Behind by fifty percent! A big part of this problem is our antiquated nine month school schedule. When public schools got their start, children were needed three months of the year to harvest crops. Today less than two percent of school-age children live on farms. Yet this ridiculous system is as revered as if it were one of the Ten Commandments. There have been attempts at reform, but the teacher's union, supported by the Democrats, has beaten them all down. Children of wealthy families continue their education during mentally stimulating summer vacations. Poor kids are left to fend for themselves. If Democrats cared for "the children" as much as their political ads claim, they would support these reforms to give poor kids more and better education, instead of fighting them.

Dr. Jay Wile, PhD., a Professor of Nuclear Chemistry at the University of Rochester, in a lecture in Orlando about the crisis in our schools, noted that his students who came from home-school backgrounds consistently out-performed both public and private school students in every type of standardized testing. For instance, home-schooled students average 67 points higher on the SAT's than the national average; about 10% better than traditionally-schooled students. He wanted to find out why parents, most of whom have no training in education, could teach their children so much better than certified teachers. So he started studying teacher's colleges.

Dr. Wile found that students in the Schools of Education on university campuses have SAT scores which are on average 100 points lower than those of the general student population. In other words, the brighter students are going into other fields. This is a reflection of the small value our society places on education. If teachers were paid as much as the garbage collectors in most cities, we could attract better qualified applicants. He also found that grading standards for education students were much more lax than in other disciplines. For example, at his own University in Indiana, the College of Arts and Sciences gave "A's" to only about 18% of students. The College of Education's percentage of "A's" was 62%.

But the problem is not only the low standards in teacher's colleges, and the pap that they teach in place of real educational principles. Teachers have also been very resistant to any form of accountability. They fight teacher testing, perhaps with good reason. A recent study showed that many New York City teachers could not pass the exams they were giving to their students. In Massachusetts 59 teachers failed an 8th grade test in writing and math.

Teachers also oppose merit-based pay increases and promotions. These policies, successful in the few school systems that have used them, reward teachers who teach well. Like all unions, the teacher's union wants everyone to be treated the same in pay and promotions regardless of whether or not they do their jobs.

Many teachers love their work, and spend their own time increasing their knowledge and abilities by taking continuing education courses and obtaining advanced degrees. But the average school teacher in the United States get only eight hours of training each year. Barbers and hairdressers are required to get more continuing education than that, and they only take care of the few hairs we have left. These people are influencing our children's minds and morals!

One last thought. Public school students attend four years of school, nine months each year, to obtain their high school diplomas. They could take a twelve week prep course and receive a GED (high school equivalency diploma) which certifies that they have learned the same material. What takes place in the 36 months of high school that is left out of the three month GED training? Well, they miss out on a lot of "fluff": socialization, pop psychology, and indoctrination in areas that most parents prefer their children not receive (such as anti-American propaganda and "sensitivity" training by homosexual activists).

They might miss valuable training on how to cook or hammer nails, things which their parents have normally taught them at home. And they don't experience the joys of running around and around the track during PE. Then there's the prom, football games, and pep rallies. Have I mentioned anything that is worthwhile? What they DO learn is math, writing and other skills that will make them employable, subjects that SHOULD be the emphasis in four-year high schools. Oh, I almost forgot. Students must be able to READ to take the GED. That is not required to graduate from most high schools.

Parents and grandparents, you had better get involved before it's too late. Don't just sit back and wait for someone else to do something about this sorry state of affairs. YOU are the "someone else." The Bible says that if a father doesn't take care of his family, he is worse than an infidel. Taking care of your family involves a lot more than just providing for them financially. If you don't get involved, your child may be one of the millions of functionally illiterate students who graduate from our high schools every year."

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Home schoolers save the government big money: "What's the effect of home-schooling and private-schooling on the cost to taxpayers of financing government schools? A new study by John Wenders and Andrea Clements, who looked at data from Nevada, finds that home-schooling and private schooling save that state's taxpayers big money. Here's a quotation from the executive summary of their study: "Based on 2003 data, the analysis shows an annual potential cost savings to Nevada taxpayers ranging from $24.3 million to $34.6 million attributable to homeschool students, and another $101.9 million to $147 million attributable to private school students, for a combined total of $126.2 million to $181.7 million".

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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